Week 7 – Waiting Period + Thoughts on the Survey
Hello everyone! Welcome back to my blog!
What’s new?
So far, I’ve gotten 26 responses to my survey! Yay! I was really worried in the beginning since last week I sent around 25 emails to professors across Arizona, and I was getting absolutely no responses to my survey. Also, even though I reached out to many people, many didn’t respond, which I expected might happen. One thing that I wished I had changed in that first batch of emails I sent out was that I titled the email “Music & Mental Health Research” since that was the gist of my project. However, one professor thought I wanted to do research at her lab. From that, I knew some other professors must have misunderstood me, hence the reason for fewer emails back. I know professors are busy people, and if they just looked at the email title without reading the whole email, they would totally misunderstand why I was reaching out to them. So, the next day later I sent another batch of emails with the title changed to “Music & Mental Health Flyer.” That edit worked a lot better, and I got a couple more responses back that the professors would be happy to share my flyer with their students.
Also, another challenge that I faced was when I learned that the Maricopa Community Colleges have a requirement that before surveys could be sent to their students, it would have to go through their IRB board, even though I already have IRB approval from BASIS. So, I had to stop and think. After consulting with Professor Mommaerts, we decided that we wouldn’t go through their IRB board and just focus on sending it to students at ASU, U of A, and NAU, since we are running out of time with this project and we wouldn’t know how long that extra approval would take. However, the interesting thing is that only professors at Glendale Community College told me about the extra IRB approval, but (before I knew about the MCC IRB), professors at Scottsdale Community College said nothing about it and responded that they would be happy to share the flyer with their students. So, I might have some responses from students at SCC.
Next Steps
As I was writing this, I actually got a couple more responses to my survey! I’m aiming for at least 30 responses to make my data generalizable and sufficient to analyze. However, the more the merrier, of course, and if I could hit 50 responses that would be great. Yesterday I sent 10 more emails, so hopefully that can reel in more people.
While I wait for more responses, I’ll start working on my paper and presentation. Time is flying by fast, so I want to make sure I get everything done in time.
That’s all for today. Thank you for reading and see you all next week for more updates!
Comments:
All viewpoints are welcome but profane, threatening, disrespectful, or harassing comments will not be tolerated and are subject to moderation up to, and including, full deletion.